I’ve been reading articles about the Instagram shadowban, trying to better understand it, and it seems like people are straight freaking out. And I get it. We all work hard to take great photos, edit them and then curate our beautiful accounts, whether for business or personal use and we want our work to be seen and appreciated by our hundreds or thousands of followers. What can I say? Our life in the gram is important.

If you haven’t seen the recent Insta (aka earth shattering!) news , it appears that Instagram has reportedly been shadowbanning certain posts – in other words, it makes it so that the posts don’t show up under the hashtags they’re using. Of course, if your posts aren’t showing up under the hashtags you’re using, you don’t get the same kind of engagement on your posts.

If you’re engagement is lower than usual, you might be getting shadow banned; unfortunately, you can’t see it from your own account or anyone’s account who already follow you. You’d have to check from an account that isn’t already following you. If that’s too much trouble, you might just need to change how you’re doing things on the gram to avoid getting further into the shadows.

According to Lifehacker, these are some things to avoid that could get your posts shadowbanned:

• Using bots and buying followers
• Using the same hashtags over and over
• Using banned hashtags that have been taken over by NSFW content

It also appears that the shadowban is only affecting business accounts so if you’re only using Instagram for personal use, you may be fine. But I’d still try and follow the above guidelines just in case or at least until we have more information or a resolution!

I’d love to learn more! Feel free to comment with any tips, tricks or learnings from your own account or research!

Thanks y’all!

Stay sweaty friends,

XOXO

Jamie